Smrt Lernins

One Mother's Homeschool Education

That shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone, but sadly, it probably will. Your dogs aren’t people. They don’t have people-rights. They don’t have people-privileges. They aren’t as important as people. They are certainly not more important than people. There are laws and ordinances that govern their behavior and yours (as it relates to them) in public.

Our state’s laws only cover dangerous animals or animals with the potential to be dangerous, which, sadly, most people don’t seem to think includes their precious Poochie-poo, no matter how many times he’s “nipped” someone. Our county, however, has clearly deliniated leash laws:

(a)(1)It shall be unlawful for the owner of any animal to permit such animal to be out of his immediate control and restraint, or to be left unattended off the premises of the owner, or to be upon the property of another person without the permission of the owner or person in possession of such other property. For the purposes of this chapter, condominium and apartment common property shall not be considered to be the premises of the animal owner. Voice control does not constitute control of an animal.

(A)(2)b. When off the premises of the owner, all animals shall at a minimum be maintained on an appropriate chain, leash or tie not exceeding 6 feet in length, and in the hands of a person who possesses the ability to restrain the animal.

There’s no ambiguity about this. We have several enclosed, off-leash dog parks within the area. There’s no excuse for a dog to be loose at a public park, period. Except the two women who brought their dogs to Noonday Park during homeschool soccer still didn’t seem to get that. They were there at the same time, but not together. The older woman (who sounded South African) had two small terrier-type dogs, off leash. The younger woman (maybe late 30s, early 40s) had a very large German Shepherd. I spoke with both women about their dogs being off leash. Both women didn’t seem to think the rules should apply to them. Both got pissy about being asked to put their dogs on leash in accordance with ordinance.

Understand, homeschool soccer has probably 150 children ranging in age from 3 to late teen, plus parents with infants and toddlers. The children are running around, shrieking with joy, kicking balls. Even under the best of circumstances, a strange dog doesn’t need to be off leash around children. These are not the best of circumstances for dogs. These are the circumstances that send what I’m sure are otherwise perfectly lovely dogs into a frenzy when their owners walk them (leashed) around the park during soccer time. I’ve seen some dogs freak the hell out, sometimes just from the activity noise, sometimes because, well, walk a cute doggy into a field full of little kids, and the kids will swarm.

Here are our case studies for today:

Woman #1: Her dogs were sniffing around some smaller children, whose game had just finished. Some of the kids were petting the dogs, others were shrinking away. Not every kid likes dogs. Not every parent encourages her children to touch strange dogs. I told the woman, “Your dogs need to be on their leashes. It’s the law, and this park is full of children playing soccer.” Her response, “It’s fine. We’re walking in the other direction from them,” and proceeded to walk through the group of children and parents, calling her dogs in a high-pitch “come here precious voice” and did not put them on a leash.

Woman #2: Was present when I asked the first woman to leash her dog, though wasn’t with Woman #1. Ignored me. I approached her directly after the kids were in the car (because, frankly, he dog was bigger than all three of the small children, was in fact bigger than two of them combined.) I used the same language. “Your dog needs to be on a leash. The park is full of small children and there are leash laws.” She just stared at me, so I thought, ok, maybe she a) doesn’t get it or b) thinks I’m insulting her dog, so I said, “He may be a very nice dog, but some children are afraid of dogs. He needs to be on a leash or you could be fined.” She stared at me some more and finally said something to the effect of what I’m saying may be true, but she doesn’t like my tone. She didn’t put the leash on. In fact, she didn’t even have a leash on her. She continued scolding me on my tone and I finally interrupted and said, “Look lady, I don’t care if you like my tone or not, because you’re the one breaking the law here, not me. Get your dog on the leash.” I got in my car and she kept glaring at me, but took her dog by his collar and hauled him to her car.

Look folks, I obviously like dogs enough to, you know, freaking OWN one, but I don’t think my dog is special enough to break the law/ordinance. Hell, regardless or ordinance, I don’t think my dog has rights equal to or greater than the rights of a person. A park full of small kids? NOT A PLACE FOR YOUR OFF LEASH ANIMAL. Your dog isn’t another child who wants to play with my child. Your dog is a dog. However much you love your dog, however smart your dog, animals sometimes act unpredictably and I don’t want my child, someone else’s child, or my/someone else’s appropriately restrained animal to be the victim of your unrestrained animal’s first (or second, etc.) freak out. And if you don’t like my tone, you can pack up your punkin feelings with your unleashed dog and go the frak home.

Put your goddamn dogs on a leash when they’re out of your house. It’s common freaking courtesy. It’s also the law or county ordinance in most places.

There’s a certain part of me that hates to leave this blog lying fallow after two years of regular posting, but I’ll be honest, I just don’t feel as safe sharing information about myself or my family on this blog any more. The incident with the fundie “friend” towards the end of last school year was really the first of a series of events that has me rethinking how much I really want to write here. A particularly nasty comment left on an older entry during the summer, right around the time I was going to get the blog up and kicking again, kind of drove it home.

The internet is full of assholes. Do I really want to share my life with those assholes?

I’ve always been a huge proponent of blogging in general and of homeschool blogging specifically. I’ve also never been one to curb my tongue (or technically, my fingers) about my feelings on certain issues. I know my opinions aren’t always popular, and mostly, that doesn’t bother me. I’m so used to being the odd (wo)man out that having uncommon or unpopular opinions isn’t a new or strange experience. I stand by my words and typically don’t mind defending them, though I draw the line at approve comments whose only goal is to insult/detract/be douchey. When I change my mind about something, I don’t have a problem recanting any previous statements.

I do have a problem putting my life, my self, my family, my thoughts out there when the result is that people are going to be personally nasty. There are people out there who don’t deserve this window into my life, and I’ve been willing to ignore those people because the positive feedback has outweighed the negative.

Now? I don’t really feel as safe. I feel more private. I feel resentful of those people who don’t have anything productive to add, but sure as hell have an ugly word about how I’m doing it wrong. I just don’t know that it’s worth it. I don’t know that it’s worth stirring the pot when what floats to the surface is crap.

It’s been a hell of a summer. Sprained ankles and weddings in the US Virgin Islands and cracked teeth (well, only one a piece of the first two, and two of the third one — one for me and one for Patchfire). We’ve been busy.

Today we start our ‘11-’12 school year. I can’t even wrap my head around how weird that is. I mean, I graduated from high school in 1997 and now my older son is starting 6th grade and my younger son is starting Kindergarten. How did I get old so fast?

I think our schedule this year is going to be pretty decent. Captain Science sat down with it and wrote out some ways he could keep himself on track, as well as (on his own) some things he thought made it a good schedule. High point point is apparently well-timed snack and lunch placement. He wants to set a timer for himself so he’ll have a bell to signal class change.

We’re moving our schedule up an hour this year, starting at 8 instead of 9. We all need to start getting up and at ‘em a little earlier anyway, so this will force my hand. I need to start going to bed earlier and waking up earlier to make the most of my day. Or something. Hell, I don’t know.

Tank is ready to go w/ school work. He won’t start most of his stuff until next week, because Daddyman is teaching the game camp, but he can’t wait to get started.

Pissed off today because I will no longer be teaching at the local homeschool co-op. The woman who runs it decided to wait until today to inform me that there will no longer be internet access, and did I need that for my classes? You know, my classes on blogging and online safety? Could I just use “snapshots” of the internet? Could I provide my own internet? Um, no. She’s had my course descriptions since the spring and only just bothered to talk about this with me, for classes starting in two weeks? Thanks, but no thanks, lady. We out.

This week is a light week. Today was orientation and the start of 10am piano lessons (a vast improvement over the 2pm ones, btw) and game camp homework and reading. The next three days are game design camp. Friday is an overview of the curricula for the year, then academic schtuffs start on Monday.

As an aside, Babypie is no longer Babypie. She is now The Honeybadger, because you know what? Honeybadger don’t care. Honeybadger don’t give a shit. She takes what she wants.

Captain Science’s ITBS results have already arrived, and they are…interesting, to say the least.

Here’s our First Standardized Testing as Homeschoolers brag section: He scored in the 99th% in vocabulary, usage and expression, math concepts and estimation (he actually got 100% of this section correct), and maps and diagrams. He has, according to this test, the language usage, map/diagram reading skills, and math concepts of a college student. Despite having never had any American history, he even managed to score in the 68th% (average) in social studies. His capitalization and punctuation scores could be higher, but a) these are the two areas where he knows what’s correct, but legitimately doesn’t give a crap and b) I’m pretty certain that’s around the point in time of the first day when he and Natasha started making paper airplanes*. Even in those areas, though, he scored at or above grade level, just not as high as his practical performance suggests he’s capable of doing.

The bragging portion is over and the WTF portion is beginning: Because then there’s the math computation score of 18th%.

Something isn’t right here. He missed no questions in the concepts/estimation section and only four questions in the problem solving/data interpretation section. I have a hard time believing he can’t do basic addition/subtraction/multiplication/division and that he remembers nothing from the fractions and decimals work he aced last year. I was kind of freaking out a little that I’d made my child math stupid this year and he was no longer capable of basic computation. HOMESCHOOL FAIL! My children should be taken away from me.

When I calmed down a little, I realized that probably what happened is that he got off sync with filling in the bubbles or some other such nonsense, because when all the other scores are in the 80th% and above, the statistical outlier is probably more indicative of a screw up with the testing materials and not a total absence of subject-area knowledge. He works with fractions and decimals almost every day that he does math and hasn’t had any problems with them, so while I suppose it’s possible that I’m Mom In Denial of Her Son’s Glaring Education Flaws(tm), I think it’s more likely that Captain Science was Son Who Doesn’t Double-Check His Work Even When Reminded Because He’d Rather Make Paper Airplanes With Natasha Who Is Awesome(tm).

I choose to focus on how, despite the random 18th% score, he still pulled off a 92nd% core/90th% composite score, both of which have a grade equivalence of 9th grade and qualify him as Above Average. We will be doing some capitalization/punctuation refresher work over the summer to make sure he really is up to snuff in those areas, and I think I’ll stick with my plan to proctor our own test next year, to minimize shenanigans.

A few weeks ago, Captain Science did the first round of standardized testing since he’s been out of public school. He took the ITBS through a neighboring homeschool co-op and it was an overall interesting experience.

Both days ran very late. In fact, the first day ran so late (almost an hour) that the director rescheduled the next day’s testing to account for an extra hour and a half…and they still ran another 45 minutes late over that! I’m pretty sure they took long breaks between every 15 minute test section.

Captain Science felt like he aced the math and the language arts, but he was a little concerned about the social studies, since he hasn’t actually had any of the stuff they covered. Oops! Told him it didn’t matter; all I want is to make sure he’s on track in math/LA and to satisfy the state’s requirements for standardized testing. None of this is the part I’d call “interesting,” however.

No, the interesting part was when, the day after testing, I picked Captain Science’s backpack up from the floor where he’d tossed it…and his test booklet and Scantron fell out. *headdesk*

That was an “oh, shit!” moment, because I was pretty sure that taking the test off site invalidated the test, meaning we’d wasted two days and $60-ish dollars on a test that would never get scored. The front of the book declared it to be property of whoever it is that distributes and scores the tests, so I emailed the test proctor and let her know we had her booklet and ask if I could drop it off. I became ever so happy to be a homeschooler when she let me know that, since the tests are only for our benefit (we have to DO them, but the state doesn’t get the scores), she’d just let me bring her the booklet and the Scantron and no one would need to be the wiser.

I zipped the whole kit n’ kaboodle up into a gallon-sized Ziplock bag, because for some reason, that made me feel like it was some how not being compromised by being away from the testing facility, and brought it to the proctor the next day. Results are already back and she’s mailing them to me.

The quirkiness of homeschoolers is how the test book came home to begin with — space cadet son + apparently equally space cadet proctors — but the quirkiness of homeschoolers also allowed us to turn the results in anyway. I’ll call it a win.

So, I haven’t been around in a while. I guess a few of you might have noticed, because I got a couple of “hey, where’d you go” and “I hope everything’s ok” comments, which is very sweet of y’all. To answer the questions:

Q) Where did you go?
A) To hell in a handbasket (but only figuratively, Rapture not withstanding).

Q) Is everything ok?
A) Yes, but also crazy.

Having a fourth child in the house, coupled with things like the end of the school year, some drama with Officer Daddyman’s work (furloughs aren’t exactly conducive to humor), my new commitment to personal health, and a newfound addiction to Glee fanfiction (for which I blame patchfire), I haven’t been in a blogging mindset. I’m just freaking tired, y’all. I do my best to be either funny, insightful/inciteful, or some combination of both, but I haven’t been able to muster up the energy for any of that over the last month or so.

Here’s what’s been up with us the last month-ish. I/we have:

Finished our school year (technically, the 180 days is over), but Captain S still has a little more science and math to wrap up before he’s done w/ the subjects.

Did our first round of standardized testing as homeschoolers (which was dramatic in its own right — will elaborate on that in a later post)

Wrapped up our second season of soccer. Captain S enjoyed it and actually put in some effort this year. Tank actually shows some real athletic ability, which completely flabbergasts me, since I have none and don’t know what to do about it. Luckily, Officer Daddyman is a nice Midwestern yankee boy who grew up playing soccer, so at least someone around here isn’t sports-incapable.

Completed the 30 Day Shred. More on that once the dress of doom is purchased, but suffice it to say, it was a HUGE accomplishment for the couch potato that was Smrt Mama McLernins.

Watched our county commissioners refuse to raise the millage rate in order to continue fully staffed and equipped public services and tell the police department (whose budget is 96% salary) to cut 10% from its budget. They negotiated down to a <4% cut, which still means 40 furloughed hours between May and September. They've already had their overtime taken away. They've already gone without salary step increases or cost of living increases for a few years now. I'm grateful for Daddyman's promotion to FTO (so we had a slight salary increase this year) and his continued ability to get decent part-time jobs. I'm not grateful that our county commissioners would rather get reelected than take care of cops, firemen, and other county services.

And really, that’s just some of it.

I’ve got some stuff in the mental works. I need to report on my failed Four Books a Month in April (seriously, I didn’t manage it). I need to tell you about the dress of doom. I should talk about the testing debacle. All of that will have to wait, though. Right now, just know that I’m not dead. That’s as good as it gets.

I’m very excited to say that I will be teaching again starting in the fall! I really enjoyed the two semesters I spent teaching writing through the various co-ops, and I’ve been looking for a venue to teach again. I won’t be teaching writing in the ‘11-’12 year, though. I’ll be teaching blogging and “digital literacy.”

Here are my course descriptions from the online catalogue, if you can indulge me a bit, for Digital Literacy:

Email, instant messenger, Facebook, forums, blogs – our children have so many ways to reach out to other people with similar interests and wide array of backgrounds. Being online means being part of a large and vibrant community, but like any community, the online world has its own rules, social expectations, and occasional dangerous elements. Do your children have the skills they need to be smart and safe digital citizens?

Digital literacy is the ability to locate, organize, understand, evaluate, and analyze information using digital technology. More than that, it’s the knowledge of how to traverse the Internet safely, how to interact with others online in a way that is polite and appropriate, and what information they should or shouldn’t share. Students will learn the basics of email, safe web navigation, distinguishing between reliable and unreliable websites (a useful tool for research), online etiquette, and how to be a responsible online “citizen.”

And Blogging 101:

Are your children reluctant writers? Are they technophiles who are more comfortable behind a computer than in front of a crowd? Do they have a lot of subject-area knowledge they would like to share with others? Blogging is the perfect format to let them share their thoughts and to develop their passion for writing!

Blogging is a meaningful way to add your voice to the Great Conversation happening all around us. Students will establish and maintain a personal blog, participate in a class blog, learn basics of HTML, and generate content for their blogs that includes text, links, and embedded images and videos. They will learn online etiquette as they comment on others’ blogs and manage comments on their own blogs (with adult guidance). Parents will be provided links to class blogs and access to their students’ blogging accounts (unless declined).

Yeah, they’re a little hokey, but the point is to get parents to want to enroll their children, right? Plus, I really do believe blogging is both valid and valuable (perhaps especially for homeschoolers). I may have mentioned before that I spent two years working for a NCLB-funded grant initiative called Blog2Learn, where I taught middle and high school teachers how to integrate blogging into their (mostly low performing/at risk) classrooms. We had a lot of success with the program in terms of increasing writing output and improving writing quality. I’ve also taught a grown-up version of Blogging 101 (and the follow up, predictably called Blogging 102) at conferences. I feel pretty comfortable and competent in this area.

If I get parental consent, I may share some links to students’ blogs or to our class blog over the course of the school year, starting in the fall. Hopefully you’ll indulge me a little and give them some positive feedback.